The first iteration of Walt Disco was formed 10 years almost to the day before I am writing this, by a few boys from Perth with an idea to start a band, looking for people to complete their group when they moved to Glasgow for university. Calum, the first drummer in Walt Disco, asked me if I was a singer and I said I was. Despite being a wee indie kid, I had never had the conversation with myself about whether I would join a band, but it was a time when I wanted to say yes to everything. The group cited Joy Division, Tame Impala and Mac DeMarco as our forming influences; I had barely heard of the latter two. We tried to cover David Bowie but we weren’t good enough. I couldn’t hit any of the notes, so we were forced to write our own songs.
We wrote three songs: a psych rock epic with vague themes of our student halls and the Bolsheviks; a Scottish-tinged, Mac-esque song called ‘Buckfast Blues’; and a song called ‘Jackets’, about the first trans person I ever met, a person on my course. I was profoundly affected by meeting them in ways I was far too early in my trans journey to understand, but enough to write this song about how the world should love them.
We entered a battle of the bands at our student union and performed these three songs. I made sure to ask my friend if I could wear one of her tops, because of course I needed to wear girls’ clothes for the first time if I was going to play a gig, for absolutely no reason other than freedom of expression, no other reason at all. We won, and we were hooked. We were a real band, and we played King Tut’s a couple of months later to all our friends. I was done for; I was a musician and nothing else.
I dropped out of university a year and a half later. We’d got a manager, I got a job in a music bar and we started getting some attention. We were recording and playing gigs in London, I did a campaign and catwalk for Celine at Paris Fashion Week, and I felt quite sure of my decision at this point.
We entered 2019 and I entered my twenties. We started getting loads of gigs, but the band was going through a lot of change. Members left and I was scrambling to make the gigs work. I think we ended up playing almost 80 shows with 12 different musicians. We didn’t have the stability to write or do the things you’re meant to do to be a good band, and I was lost. I needed queerness. I was desperate to invite it into my life but didn’t know how. The best I could do was be a bisexual “man” and get my heart broken by bisexual women who couldn’t love me the way I needed to be loved yet.
The band felt like the only way I could explore queerness and I tried everything: questioning the gendering of clothes, experimenting with accepted forms of gender bentness, New Romanticism, drag, you name it. In a beautiful way, it’s been a vehicle for exploration and expression, but a confused one. Queer sounds became an influence in a further attempt to douse myself in queerness on our ‘Young Hard & Handsome’ EP and especially our first album ‘Unlearning’.
We didn’t set out with much direction and have done constant figuring out along the way, but my desperate need for queerness was so limited in my daily life that it became plastered over the band in a way that was honestly beautiful, and young, and chaotic. We looked fabulous and sounded insane, but it was not fully authentic to us.
The insecurity I felt about projecting this camp male persona, writing about semi-fictional experiences with the few men I’d slept with, felt profoundly uncomfortable. I couldn’t be proud of these songs. We exited our first album campaign in a difficult place. Looking back, it’s a batshit, playful and creative album that I can be proud of, and so many of the songs that were honest helped me in massive ways to become the girl I am.
This computer rock – hyperpop sound was not who the five of us felt we were, and we went into the next album with a completely reactionary mindset, with a need for organic sounds. So we made ‘The Warping’, a chamber pop-esque album with rock influences, even further away from the music that made us and, of course, orchestral instruments all over it. We felt so far away from this music, and audiences could tell, I think.
We were struggling to be happy. I was in the grips of dysphoria and we were all thinking about life beyond the band, or possibly music. But then we just started writing without too much discussion about what it would be, making sounds and writing without a tangible influence. We started to feel some hope and, ultimately, felt proud of and connected to our art. Jack and I traded songs in a sort of existentially devastating tennis match, but a good one. These songs got us signed to EMI North and we were able to quit our jobs and have another proper go at this.
I felt shame, more than anyone, about our past work. It made me want to start all over again and reform under a new name, but this was also coming from a place of fear: fear of having my entire queer journey since I was 18 all over the internet, from little bisexual twink with no interest in men, through stages of questioning my gender, femme non-binaryness etc., with this history all being a reminder of how unhappy I was.
We decided that hiding from our previous work was so much less of a story, and that, if fame or notoriety comes, my well-documented trans journey is a beautiful one. Even if I find it hard to look at myself, and even if that invites hate, it’s worth it to be there for people who may need it.
At the time of writing, it’s less than three weeks until we release ‘Walt Disco’, our third album, self-titled as a direct reaction to the discussions mentioned above, with many of the songs reflecting on this journey as a band. My best friends and I made an album we love together. I started hormones this year, I love being a trans butch lesbian, and all of this is making it a little easier to figure out happiness. I’m 28.
All my love,
Jocelyn
